I have been trying to find a Tea Party "platform" online recently. I'm really not finding anything solid. I've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt, but much of what I am finding about them looks bat shit crazy. Would you say that Rove is trying to remove the bat shit crazy from the Republican party here? Because that would be a good thing.

ASPEN, Colo. — New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) on Thursday offered a clear broadside against Republicans drifting toward a more libertarian view of foreign policy, lumping Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) in with them and suggesting they explain their position to victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The House earlier this week narrowly voted against a reduction in funding for the National Security Agency, as libertarian-leaning members from both sides joined together to vote for the amendment.

“As a former prosecutor who was appointed by President George W. Bush on Sept. 10, 2001, I just want us to be really cautious, because this strain of libertarianism that’s going through both parties right now and making big headlines, I think, is a very dangerous thought,” Christie said.

Asked whether he includes Paul — a fellow potential 2016 presidential candidate — in his criticism, Christie didn’t back down.

“You can name any one of them that’s engaged in this,” he said. “I want them to come to New Jersey and sit across from the widows and the orphans and have that conversation. … I’m very nervous about the direction this is moving in.”

Christie also praised the national security strategies of both President Obama and George W. Bush.

“I want to say that I think both the way President Bush conducted himself and the way President Obama has conducted himself in the main has been right, because we haven’t had another one of those attacks that killed thousands of Americans,” Christie said.

What a moron. I could easily sit across from someone who lost someone on 9/11 and explain to them why they should blame an over-aggressive foreign policy for their loss, and why the moronic response we've had the last decade has only made us more of a target not less of one.

Our forefathers would roll over in their graves watching us give away all of our liberties and freedoms that they laid their lives down for us to have all because we're afraid that something that had never happened before just may happen again.

Fear. We're giving it all away because we're afraid to die. Yet they were willing to die just for us to have it. Pathetic, really.

Our forefathers would roll over in their graves watching us give away all of our liberties and freedoms that they laid their lives down for us to have all because we're afraid that something that had never happened before just may happen again.

Fear. We're giving it all away because we're afraid to die. Yet they were willing to die just for us to have it. Pathetic, really.

Our forefathers started rolling over in their graves over the loss of liberty when FDR got the New Deal passed, if not before. It's weird that people think that we've suddenly departed from the vision of our national founding.

__________________

"I'll see you guys in New York." ISIS Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to US military personnel upon his release from US custody at Camp Bucca in Iraq during Obama's first year in office.

Our forefathers would roll over in their graves watching us give away all of our liberties and freedoms that they laid their lives down for us to have all because we're afraid that something that had never happened before just may happen again.

Which forefathers? The ones who passed sedition acts? The ones who suspended habeas corpus?

With all due respect to the Founding Fathers, the idea that they were some sort of infallible saints and geniuses is ridiculous. I also think it is a tired and weak argument to constantly assume what they would be for and against in the modern world. In many ways, they have more in common with cavemen than people of the world today. What kind of security measures would they have endorsed in a world with the internet and nuclear weapons? You don't know.

Which forefathers? The ones who passed sedition acts? The ones who suspended habeas corpus?

With all due respect to the Founding Fathers, the idea that they were some sort of infallible saints and geniuses is ridiculous. I also think it is a tired and weak argument to constantly assume what they would be for and against in the modern world. In many ways, they have more in common with cavemen than people of the world today. What kind of security measures would they have endorsed in a world with the internet and nuclear weapons? You don't know.

It turns out that they left a lot of ideas on paper. Not that I think you're capable of possessing an idea, but still. Anyone claiming the founding fathers were mindless dolts isn't really worth having a conversation with for the fact that they're incapable of holding up their end of the thought teeter-totter.

It turns out that they left a lot of ideas on paper. Not that I think you're capable of possessing an idea, but still. Anyone claiming the founding fathers were mindless dolts isn't really worth having a conversation with for the fact that they're incapable of holding up their end of the thought teeter-totter.

Nobody said they were mindless dolts.

But there were MANY of them, and they SERIOUSLY DISAGREED about absolutely everything other than "be independent from England."

When people say "Founding Fathers" thought X or would have supported Y, or never supported Z, that's when you start to go off course. Which Founding Fathers? They had as little in common as Pelosi/Obama/Reid v. Boehner/McConnell.

__________________
"I love signature blocks on the Internet. I get to put whatever the hell I want in quotes, pick a pretend author, and bang, it's like he really said it." George Washington

It turns out that they left a lot of ideas on paper. Not that I think you're capable of possessing an idea, but still. Anyone claiming the founding fathers were mindless dolts isn't really worth having a conversation with for the fact that they're incapable of holding up their end of the thought teeter-totter.

Who is claiming they were mindless dolts? I think you would have to be a mindless dolt to think that's what I was saying.

I would be interested in seeing the ideas "they" (as if they were all of one mind) put on paper about weapons that could wipe out a million people at a time.

And as I said (and you ignored) these same folks passed things like sedition acts, so take off the blinders and maybe you'll learn that this country was never a freedom utopia--not in the 1700s, 1800s, not even in the 1950s! It has always been a battle to balance freedoms with practical reality of security and living in a civilized society.